Always and Forever
by laugh4life
Summary: Insightful, captivating story taking place in episode 3X8 when Elena tells Rebekah the truth about her family's history. Rated T just in case. One-Shot. R&R please!


**Rebekah's POV**

"I thought I told you to leave. Twice," I state with a cold, cruel voice, becoming very annoyed with this persistent little girl.

Popping the cork back on the bourbon bottle, I turn around with ease, but automatically notice her thin figure standing a few feet in front of me. I can sense that something is wrong the moment I lay eyes on her. Her posture is different, more rigid. She was more laid-back earlier, whens she kept bothering me with her constant whining, and her figure was looser. She's tense now, making me become tense as well.

These past few days, I've learned much about the 'new' Salvatore brothers; their little pet witch, Bonnie; their vampire barbie doll, Caroline, who I highly dislike; and most of all, the precious doppelganger, Elena, who hasn't been the best at cooperating. But among these things is one very helpful hint. These people are a pack; they have a special bond that ties them all together, and that seems unbreakable, no matter how thin it can be at the moment, and when one of these people are tense, they generally all are. Meaning that since Elena appears to be... unusually rigid, something has got to be wrong.

Bracing myself, I look her in the eyes, trying to look as authoritative as I can.

"How do you know that Micheal killed your mother?" She asks. I detect some slyness beneath her voice, as if she knew something that I do not. But it is impossible. I was there; She was not. It was a thousand years ago, for goodness' sake! Any chance of her knowing something, anything, more than me is very, very slim.

"Nick was there. He told me," And this is true.

"He lied to you." Her voice is matter-of-fact, very sure, but she's obviously oblivious to many things.

_Why make all these foolish accusations, Elena, if you've no proof to back them up? You silly girl. I've known my brother for a thousand and six years! And you've know him for, what? A few weeks? Sure, Niklaus is a manipulator, a power-hungry man, and quite the killer, but if anything, he's not a liar. At least not to his siblings, to me. That is a fact... I think._

"And how do you know that?" I ask with narrowed eyes, curiosity creeping into my voice.

"The cave where you carved your family's name is covered in symbols. The story of your family. How your parents arrived. How they made peace-"

She reaches into her purse, and throws down a photograph of a rock wall onto the splintering coffee table in front of us. The picture shows a deteriorating rock wall, rusty and wet with years of erosion, and carved into the wall are symbols. Symbols of the vikings. But that isn't the strange thing about it. The thing that shocks my mind is that she, a measly human being, got a hold of _our_ symbols, of _our_ life story, from back when I was still human, over a thousand years ago.

The symbols are simply read. It's obvious what they say. The tree in the center is a descriptive drawing of the white ash tree, the tree that gave us our vampirism to begin with. In the carving, people dance around the base of it with celebration. These were the people of our land in that old day, our neighbors whom we loved so much, before they gave us a reason to hate them. There is a sunset in the horizon of the picture, indicating a lovely, kind day. This was obviously the day of our arrival in the town. The day we became part of them.

Elena continues on, with another picture ready in her fist.

"The spell to turn them into vampires-"

She slaps it down. This time, there are four different heads etched into the wall, clearly outlining the key components to turning someone into a vampire. And there are waves in between the figures, indicating magic. And there is a demon at the end of the picture, showing the finished product. Something that we were never proud of, even though its been our nature for so long; too long.

"And this-"

A circle at the bottom of the figure, indicating a moon, and a circle with triangles around it a top of the moon, showing a sun. Two triangles connect the sun and the moon, and there are also dots in between. Just as everything else was, this is a picture that I remember fairly well. My throat feels tight as I begin to get a feel for where Elena is headed with this.

"This is the symbol for hybrid. Its a combination of the werewolf and the vampire symbol. And this is the one for your mother."

This time, the symbol is obvious. There is no need to interpret; the detail is drawn with precision and effort.

Recognizing this old symbol immediately, the words slip out of my mouth, "The necklace."

Elena looks at me somberly but fiercely, and continues speaking, with much more to say, "And this is the story of her death..."

Its the hybrid symbol, and an original witch symbol; a complicated figure resembling a person. There are other symbols off to the side, but these are the ones that draw my eye. Elena explains what I'm seeing, rewording the furious thoughts that run through my mind in a jumble.

"The hybrid killed the original witch. Not Micheal; Klaus." She accuses, her eyes boring into mine, begging me to believe it. But it is too much. Too much for me to believe, for me to now turn against my brother after believing for a thousand years that he trusted us with the truth, that he honestly told us the whole, complete story of what really happened that night.

"No. No, he wouldn't!" I shake my head violently, trying to erase what she just said. It's wrong. She's wrong. Nothing is different- it can all be the same as it was if I'd let it.

But that's just the thing. I cannot let it be. Slowly, I raise my denouncing eyes to her fiery ones.

"The curse on him made it so that he would be the only one of his kind, and then she rejected him. With the werewolf gene comes aggression, and violence, when he turned, all of that was heightened! He killed her, Rebekah, and then he made up this entire lie about your father so that he wouldn't lose you."

Furious, I yank the photos off the table and stalk over to the fireplace, tossing the pictures into the burning flames with more anger than I've had in a long while. How could this be? It's impossible!

"These mean nothing! They're just stupid drawings that were stupid people who had no idea who my family was!" I shout, trying to drown out my thoughts by telling myself this over and over, my mind shrieking with hurt, maliciousness, sadness, and disbelief until I'm trembling.

Elena's doe eyes look calmly into my raging ones as she counters, "Then why are you so upset?"

Mind tearing apart, I thrust my outrage upon her fragile shoulders, yelling at her with and inquiring but knowledgeable voice, "Why are you doing this to me? I've done nothing to you!"

"Klaus killed your mother, he has a hold on you, on me, on everyone! He has for 1000 years, we have to make it stop!" She argues back, her voice raising with confidence, trying vainly to get me to understand the scenario, to see things her way.

"Shut up! Just shut up! Don't talk anymore! Nothing!"

My fury takes the best of me, and within a second, I've got Elena thrown up against the wall next to the fireplace. The heat radiating from the flames is hot, suffocating. My hand closes around the girl's neck, all of the bitterness of my soul ready to be used up. The strength in my hand is great, larger than any force of the natural world. It could start a hurricane, an earthquake, even a landslide. It could snap her neck with a hundredth of the strength that I'm holding in right now.

Her breath catches within her small frame. I can sense her fright, her shock, everything that she has a right to. Her olive-toned cheeks turn pink with the effort of trying to breathe. My fingers grip her windpipe, ready to crush it easily. But my mind won't allow it; My fingers, immobile like a statue, have all the pressure in the world within them, but despite that force, the force of my mind is stronger, and it stops their decent on the prey.

It's been seven seconds. Long, torturous seconds, of which I have internally debated my anger. A few seconds more, and the girl will drop dead, without the pressure in my fingers increasing at all.

All of a sudden, I let go, my fingers easing off of her.

Elena gasps in air, her color returning to normal. She reaches a fragile hand up to her throat and then swallows, stricken with shock.

In that moment, the feelings of earlier come rushing back to me, overwhelming me with sadness and undeniable anger at the one person I thought I loved most in this cruel world; My brother, Niklaus.

And now he's not to be trusted.

Eyes blurring, my mind slips into the past.

_We stood in the remains of our village, what was left of it. We just had finished digging our mother's grave; it was a day of farewells. We were to move on that same day, travel to a different village and start over again. Start our lives as real creatures of the night. But right now, we were there for our mother and ourselves, just Klaus and I._

_We hovered over her body, which was beneath the ground, in a hole dug for the dead. A coffin for the honored. She gave her life for us._

_"I know you think she hated you, Niklaus, but she did not. She was just afraid. I'm sorry she turned her back on you," I sympathized, and promised honestly, "I will never do that."_

_"Nor will I," Our brother Elijah's voice. Soft footsteps tread behind me, as I realized that I should have seen this coming. Elijah always was close to us and to mother; of course he'd lag behind. _

_His promise urged on my wish, and we looked to Niklaus for his approval. We loved him, and we shall do as he said. When no reply is uttered, I went on.  
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_"We stick together as one. Always and forever."_

_Having held out my hand to Niklaus, he took it. His hand was rough but gentle, and I could feel his soul tearing apart as he stared down onto our mother's grave. He loved her, and she betrayed him. But Elijah and I will never do the same to him._

_This is the promise that we swore to keep for eternity._

_Then, I held my hand out to Elijah, and he took it carefully also. _

_Only when my two brothers took hands, did it really feel like we'd be together for eternity. _

_And we have been ever since.  
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_Always and forever._

The memory disappears, my mind coming back to reality as my heart breaks. We'd promised, and we've believed all these years that our bond was unbreakable.

But it was not. It had never been true. Elijah and I had believed Niklaus without a doubt, because we love him. And we'd believed that he'd trust us enough to tell us the complete truth. But love can never reassure that much, I suppose, since it was all a lie. All one thousand years, every time our minds had traveled back to that night, each one of us had thought about the tragic incident that had happened. But only one of us had the right recollection of events.

While Elijah and I had believed that Micheal had killed our mother the entire nine centuries, Klaus had known differently. The man that we've trusted most in the world, stuck side-by-side with this entire time, had lied an enormous lie; the truth is that he killed our mother, and Elena's pictures are proof of that.

Those few seconds between when I had by hand around Elena's neck, and just now, flashed by in a blink of emotionless seconds.

My rage has disappeared for the most part; my sadness has disintegrated for the good; but the feeling of betrayal stays with me, eating up my hatred and disappointment, but leaving me with a heightened feeling of discontentment.

And then I begin to cry.

Silently, tears roll down my pale cheeks. I can feel my expression becoming remorseful, saddening. The salty tears sting my cheeks, and I lift my palm to my face, shocked to find the wet rivulets dampening them. Its been six hundred years since I'd last cried; I'd doubted I was capable of it at all. But this- this truly calls for it.

Sinking down, ever so slowly, my sobs grow to a faint noise of depression. My fingers tremble with knowledge, my legs feel weak as though they could not support me had I tried.

The warm fire dries my tears before they could slip off my face completely, but they keep coming anyways. My heart feels as though it shall crack into a million pieces, pieces so small that I had doubted they'd existed before. Betrayal of a thousand years keeps the forlornness streaming.

I reach my palms up to my face again, trying vainly to wipe the tears away, and I'm shocked to feel how cold my fingers are. They're cold as if they could freeze my tears right as they fall down my cheeks.

Feeling self-conscious of crying in front of this Elena girl, I make my wobbly fingers obey and smear my tears into nonexistence, but it only starts another violent round of bawling.

Lips trembling with combined anger and betrayal, sadness and humility, I let out an ear-piercing wail. A wail that holds all the feelings that I've been keeping locked up inside not just for the past twenty minutes, but since the beginning of my existence as a vampire. All the feelings that I've bottled up beside Klaus and Elijah as we've traveled the world together, let out in front of a human that I barely know.

And then I'm tearing through the house like a bullet. Ripping paintings off the walls, smashing glassware and tabletops, shredding carpets and mattresses, pounding my fist against hardwood and shale and concrete and- anything- trying to inflict pain upon myself, pain that I deserve for being an idiot all these years, pain that will hopefully take away some of my emotions for the time being. Pain that will overpower my feelings.

And then I'm right back where I started, kneeling down in front of the hearth with Elena by my side, my hands bruised and bleeding, but healing as promised, my feelings strong as ever, unable to be taken away.

Time seems to slow down immensely, and after what seems to be forever, but in reality is only about ten minutes, Elena sinks to the ground beside me and shares my weeping, hesitantly beginning to rub my back. When I don't knock her arm away, she keeps rubbing it in circular, calming motions. And honestly, it helps me.

Maybe in the future, she could be my freind, someone that I could look to for advice, for problem solving.

But right now, all I can do is cry.

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><p><strong>And that's it. <strong>

**Though I know it was foolish to put up another one-shot while I still have a couple stories that need to be updated (and haven't been in a while), last episode truly got beneath my skin, and I felt the need to write a story about this scene, so vividly that I sat down today and wrote it with no interruptions at all. Well, anyways, here's the deal :)  
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**Depending upon how inspired I am, I may write another chapter to this story, even though it was supposed to be a one-shot, so I'd be extremely grateful if you reviewed! Thanks a lot for reading and if I do write another chapter, I hope you'll return to read it!**

**Reviews please? :)**


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